Sometimes it’s good to take things personally

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/06/2019 (2314 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is a theory that the more players on your football team who feel like they have something to prove, and who are affected by the “noise” off the field, the better your team will generally be.

In case you missed it, last week Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols showed up to a press conference wearing a hat with “Game Manager” on it, a gift from his wife. They were poking fun at the label that some have bestowed upon his starting-QB talents. Allow me to be the first to say that if this label was even part of the inspiration and motivation for the three-touchdown, zero-interception, 354 yards of offence, 35 minutes of possession and 33 points, I hope he gets “Game Manager” tattooed prominently across his chest.

Over the years, you tend to hear the same remarks from athletes to the media when times are tough. They claim they don’t read the papers, they don’t watch the news or hear the noise outside of the locker room, and they don’t care what anyone else thinks. They are oblivious to it all, they claim. It plays back like a broken record.

It’s the athletes’ way of fighting back against whatever narrative the media happens to be pushing that day. The best way to refute or dismiss an opinion is to suggest it doesn’t exist, you haven’t heard it and you couldn’t care less about it. The truth does sometimes hurt, so if you don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t sting as much. Often, the closer a media member is to the crux of the matter, the more defensive and upset a player or coach can get. Some players really don’t care what others say about them — outside of their peers and teammates — but some really do.

If you are going to have a long and sustained career in professional sports, you are going to have to find things to continually push and motivate to keep you playing on that edge. Believe it or not, running out of the tunnel in front of thousands of fans on a beautiful summer day to horns, drums and the smell of hotdogs can become routine over the years, and you can start to take it for granted.

Some athletes, I would guess — Nichols, Andrew Harris and Adam Bighill come to mind — have figured it out, though. No matter how many accolades or accomplishments they reap, or how good they play in a season or a game, they will find the dissent somewhere, and it will fuel them. The minute they start feeling too good about themselves, they are done. The minute they take to heart all the compliments they get, they fear they will get soft.

They rarely acknowledge it, but it’s there. It could be something another player says to them on the field in the heat of the battle. It could be a debate on social media over their value against another player’s. It could be a rejection from the NFL. It could be a comment someone leaves under their Instagram post. It could be a comment a fan makes to a call-in show after a game. That’s all it takes to infuriate them mentally, and restore that “never-good-enough mindset” that, in turn, feeds the work ethic and desire, year after year.

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To play at a high level consistently and throughout your career, you always have to have a new source of “prove it” to someone. Some players feed off the negativity and speculation about their careers. Some players have the ability to interpret a level of disrespect — that isn’t even noticeable to others — that makes them get up at 5 a.m. and hit the gym before practice, and do all the things that you need to do to be elite.

Teams that keep a core group of players together for multiple successful seasons go one of two ways: they either get fat and complacent, riding the laurels of yesteryears, or they figure out new ways to bring out the best in themselves. Admitting you’re reactive to public opinion is never going to catch on in macho sports, but maybe a lot of us would be better off wearing hats that announce “mediocre on a good day” or “writer hack.”

After all, it never hurts to try when it comes to improving performance.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97